Wong Kar-Wai, Hong Kong's director of "art" films spins out a winner. Two HK cops, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung, search for love in a disconcerting urban world with lots of jerk-motion photography and no establishing shots. Kaneshiro falls for dope smuggler

Brigitte Lin (hidden somewhere behind a blond wig and sunglasses), who mows down her enemies with a gun.

Leung is crazy about an airline stewardess who's no longer in love with him, so he spends his time moping in his apartment, playing with model airplanes and having dialogues with a selection of stuffed toys, cabinets, aquarium fish, dishrags, soap, himself -- basically, anything that'll listen. Brigitte Lin appears for the first half of the film, then vanishes for some undisclosed reason; her scenes chasing down the Arab co-conspirators who swindled her are filmed in an indescribable sort of thrilling jerk-motion I've never seen duplicated.

Faye Wong (who bears more than a slight resemblance to Lin) is cute as the Chungking Express counter girl who listens to "California Dreaming" over and over (the audience hears it seven times), falls in love with Tony Leung, gets his apartment keys and cleans up, putters around. The movie may not have not have much in the way of a straightforward moral per se, but it's a surprisingly unoppressive treatment of lives and loves out of synch.